ELPC’s webinar about Electric Car Trends and Policy Updates highlighted the challenges and opportunities ahead for electric cars to succeed on America’s roads and in America’s factories. ELPC Executive Director Howard Learner, Edmunds.com Senior Green Car Editor John O’Dell, and ELPC Senior Policy Advocate Madeleine Weil presented and responded to questions. A podcast is available here.

Register today for this free webinar on Monday, March 5th, at 11 a.m. CST. Edmunds.com Senior Green Car Editor John O’Dell will join ELPC staff to detail current trends in electric car buying and electric car policies. Register today!

ELPC Deputy Director Kevin Brubaker, who leads ELPC's high-speed rail efforts, was aboard the Midwest's first high-speed rail train to leave Union Station.

On Feb. 15, 2012, high-speed rail travel arrived in the Midwest. The first high-speed train outside the Northeast United States departed Chicago’s Union Station at 7 a.m., traveling through Indiana and southwest Michigan to its destination in Kalamazoo, Mich. The 138-mile journey, which included a stop in New Buffalo, Mich., was completed in 2 hours, 8 minutes.

Kalamazoo is the highway point on the Chicago-Detroit passenger rail corridor. Eventually, officials say that 5.5-hour trip will be trimmed to 3.75 hours.Other high-speed rail corridors in the Midwest will include routes from Chicago to St. Louis and the Twin Cities.

Read more from CBS 2 Chicago and MLive.com.

Thanks to some Democratic deviltry in Springfield, the Chicago area’s GOP congressmen face the fight of their political lives this year. They’ve been stuck into blue-leaning districts or, in one case, forced to battle it out against each other in the same district.

Who will survive? To a large degree, the answer will be those who focus on really taking care of their constituents’ needs rather than thoughtlessly mouthing a hard ideological line.

Voters want to get policies that will help them. They’re sick to death of fights just for fights’ sake.

Which leads to a critical House vote that could occur as soon as next week, a vote that very much will affect the ability of hundreds of thousands of Chicago-area residents to get to work and support themselves and their families.

The vote is on a five-year spending plan on the nation’s roads, bridges and transit that’s been proposed by House GOP leadership and that I’ve been writing about lately.

“Purchasing any car requires thoughtful consiaderation of many variables – on brand, color, price – and purchasing an electric car can involve an extra layer of research,” said Madeleine Weil, Senior Policy Advocate at ELPC. “PlugInChicagoMetro.org can help consumers by providing a central resource of information about the differences, benefits and decisions involved in being an electric car owner here in Chicago and the suburbs.”

ELPC is working to advance policies that support electric cars and public charging infrastructure in Chicago and the Midwest. “Electric and hybrid cars reduce our dependence on foreign oil, produce less pollution than conventional cars, and can help consumers save money at the gas pump,” said ELPC Executive Director Howard Learner. “We should also seize the opportunities to grow the clean car jobs of the future in the Midwest auto industry.”

According to Learner, government support for public charging stations powered by clean wind and solar power, entrepreneurial ingenuity in the business community and low-cost power available for nighttime charging are just some of the ingredients that will make Chicago a market leader. “The Chicago area can become one of the nation’s leading markets for these new clean electric, natural gas and hybrid vehicles,” he said.

More and more consumers are becoming interested in learning about electric vehicles. “There’s a lot of information about electric cars out there – from dealers selling a particular model, from ‘car guys’ obsessed with the innovative technology, from critics who will scrutinize any and all changes to the status quo – but we’re not any of those people,” Weil added. “We realize purchasing a car is a personal decision. We just want to provide a forum to help Chicago-area consumers make car-buying decisions for themselves and their families.”

For more information about electric vehicles available in the Midwest in 2012, please go to www.PlugInChicagoMetro.org.